THE SONGS OF A NIGHTINGAIL

       Why am I posting last week’s post this week?   Because my computer was down last week.   I was having it updated.   I’m sure you’ll laugh at this, but it was being updated from Windows 7 to Windows 11.   I hate change and was holding on as long as I could, but when I began to lose access to too many things because my browser was too old and I couldn’t update it because Windows 7 wouldn’t support a browser update, I had to bite the bullet, suck it up, and go for the update.   Luckily the fellow who did it managed to make the update look almost like my old program, bless him.   So now I’m back online.   Yay. I have to say well-made toffee is  yummy!  We used to order English Toffee from a company located in one of the towns where we lived until their business really took off and they became too expensive for our purse.  A shame for us, but good for them, I guess.  Then again, there’s always “Almond Roca”. J ...

  1920s:  My husband’s Aunt Phyllis Brasier, Grandmother Lillian Ross Pringle Brasier, and his mother, Virginia Rossmore Brasier  My husband’s mother, Virginia, in 1947. Virginia in 1987 My husband’s other grandmother, Daisy May Elizabeth Young, first row, second from right.  Not sure who everyone else is, but lots of short hair styles.  c. 1930s?   My mother, Lillian Adelle Whitney at age 18 in 1936 in a short bob of the day. Mom in 1987 at the age of 69 in a hairstyle she wore for many years.  Every once in a while she’d try changing it to something different, but it wasn’t long before she was back to her signature hairdo.  It simply suited her as nothing else did. At 98 Mom’s hair was getting a little too thin to be able to wear it as she had for so long, but we all liked this new look. In my teen years I wore my hair long – sometimes down, sometimes up in a ponytail or chignon, but when I reached my 20s and was working, I wanted to look m...

  Okay, so it’s a banjo.  It’s still a stringed instrument and the player was very talented.  My husband’s grandfather, Harry Brasier, while on a camping trip with friends in the late 1800s.   My husband with his guitar.  He played with a bluegrass group whose leader went on to play with Bill Monroe in Nashville.  Why he had his guitar positioned this way I’m not sure as he is left-handed, strums left-handed, and the guitar is strung that way. Husband holding his guitar in the correct position, and our son with his wind-up ukulele. Our son with his Dad’s guitar pretending to play. He’s right-handed so his Dad’s left-handed guitar wouldn’t work for him. Son with his own guitar.  He could strum a couple of chords fairly well. Yours truly with my guitar which I bought second hand in 1968.  I could play two songs and not really all that well: “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”, and “Blowin’ in the Wind”.  That was it! My youngest sister and m...

  Me, myself, and I, my brother, middle Sis, youngest Sis, and Mom standing on a bridge over the Merced River in Yosemite National Park in 1956. When I was growing up my bedroom was at the top of our house which was on a hill so I had a wonderful view over all the rooftops below and on down to and across San Francisco Bay.  It was especially beautiful at night as I could see the lights of the City and some of the bridges.  (That’s my little parakeet, “Tweetie”, enjoying some free time outside of his cage in 1960.) I took this picture of my youngest sister while hanging out of one of the windows pictured above.  A couple of years later I wouldn’t have been able to take this picture as my Dad had built a roof over the patio below. My 3 daring idiot kids (top to bottom: son, eldest, & youngest daughters) up a tree in 1986.  When I think of how easily one of those dead branches could have snapped! Whew.  I did, however, take time to run inside & grab my...

  1979 – Lake Tahoe.  Eldest daughter does a nice underwater handstand with her sister looking on.  Now it’s little sis’s turn to go underwater for a handstand with older sis standing by. A few years later in ’83 both sisters doing handstands – or attempting to? – on the beach in Pine Mountain Lake. Eldest sister succeeds rather well. I did commendable cartwheels when I was younger, but I couldn’t balance well (or long) enough to do a handstand. I remember using this bar to hang upside down by the backs of my knees once, but I didn’t like the feeling of being upside down. The only time I felt okay being upside down, more or less, is when I had a stuffy nose and in those days when you were given nose drops you then had to hang your head over the side of the bed for a few minutes.  Somehow I didn’t mind that kind of upside down.  I’d spend the time pretending the ceiling was the floor and imagine how I’d get around on it.  Gosh, I haven’t thought about th...